Moved this blog

I have moved over this blog to my own domain to be able to use more advanced functions of the WordPress software. Please visit me there at:

http://dslr-video.com/blogmag/

The D90 arrived

Here with a Nikkor 35 2.0 AI I am trying out. Shot with a D300 with another great old lens – the Nikkor 105 2.5 AI. More about it soon.

Meanwhile a few D90 images, shot with the kit lens 18-105VR.

And here is a small video shot with the D90. (The quality is reduced by conversions for editing and heavy compression).

On the road

Some photos from Skåne and Dalarna in Sweden (all with Nikon D300). Öresundsbron, the bridge between Sweden and Denmark:

When I took these photos I had a scary experience. I first used the 18-55 II lens…

…and when I switched to the 55-200VR I dropped the lens – about a meters fall on concrete… Horror – but the lens bounced a little and showed no damage except some small marks on the rubber focusing ring.
I immediatly tried it, to see if it was working. To my surprise it looked as sharp as ever.

The incident made me think that plastic build maybe is not so bad after all. But also that maybe I should finally get that 18-200 VR superzoom…
The bridge again:

Brösarps Backar. Active D-Lightning, 18-55 II lens.

55-200VR:

Simrishamn, 18-55:

Sundborn, Dalarna:

The famous home of the swedish painter Carl Larson, where he and his wife Karin introduced the so called scandinavian style of interior design . It was forbidden to take photos indoors.

Summer night, Svärdsjö, Dalarna:

The good life:

Cruising

Some friends of ours invited us a boat ride for a few hours in the Stockholm archipelago. I had my D40 with the 18-55 II and the D300 with the 70-200R on board.

Weekend in sports

Had a very busy weekend two weeks ago, first shooting kids soccer, then the Stockholm Marathon.
Took over 1600 images on that single day.

The day before, I bought the MB10 battery grip that makes the Nikon D300 shot as fast as 8 fps. Combined with the 70-200VR 2.8 lens, you get an awesome combo for shooting sports. I will try to get the time to write a mini review about it soon.
Some more images from the marathon (dont want to post kid soccer images without permission from the parents). A few of these will probably be published in the swedish edition of Runners World.

A view from the bridge that is the highest point of the course (Västerbron):

A blind runner:

After the climb on the bridge, going downwards feels easy…

Well dressed…

I also used the TC17 tele converter on the 70-200VR, testing the AF speed by shooting close ups and even portraits of moving runners. (If I get the time, I will also write a mini report of the TC17 soon).

Goal!

I am helping out the local soccer club making a magazine featuring sponsor ads, with some editorial content. Today I went to a game for about 30 minutes with my D300 and 70-200VR. It was an overcast day with rain hanging in the air. I used manual settings between 1/800s – 1/1000s, aperture 3.5 – 4.0, auto ISO varied between ISO 280 to ISO 1100. AF-C, 51-point dynamic AF.





And the goal:




Link to larger images here.

London calling

Just came back from a weekend in London. The weather shifted from sunny to heavy rain – several times every day, which wasn’t ideal from a photographic view… Often it looked like this:

During the weekend the London Marathon took place. We took a walk to the finish area at Buckingham Palace. The weather was nice and sunny. This photo was exposed at ISO 200, 1/500s, F11.

Then it became cloudy and a rain started to fall. When the first female runners (the women started ahead of the men) arrived, the rain was very hard and the light levels had fallen about six (!) stops. I had to expose at 1/500s, F 4-5.6 (wide open on the 55-200VR lens I was using) at ISOs between 1400 and 3200 (S-auto, auto-ISO, Active D-lightning normal, jpeg fine, high ISO NR low). Considering these difficult conditions I think the results came out well.

ISO 1400:

Larger image here (use your browsers back-button to return here).

ISO 3200:

Larger image here.

ISO 3200:

Larger image here.
 
Now we were soaking wet, and gave up before the first men came. What I learned from this was that with the high ISO ability of a high performance DSLR like the Nikon D300 it was possible to shot outdoor sports even in very bad light with a relative slow lens.
(50 percent crops of the high ISO marathon images here and here)

On this travel I missed the wide range of the 18-200 lens i tried in Portugal. I had the 18-55 and 55-200VR Nikkor lenses and also the small Nikon P5000 camera. Often I had the wrong lens, and when you dont have time to switch the perspective tends to be similar in the images, missing the variety that is needed in a collection.
In a city, so amazingly rich with history and culture as London, you want more time, (and less rain…) to make it better justice, but here are some tourist snaps anyway.

Traffic:

Hold your horses:

Buckingham Palace:



Nice number:

Themsen:


Tower Bridge:

Harrods:

British Museum – free entrance and no restrictions for photography – not bad.



St Pauls Cathedral:

Houses of Parliament:


London Eye:

 

Monte Gordo, Portugal

Spent last week in the small town Monte Gordo in Portugal, very close to the spanish border.The beach is very long. Most of the time there were fairly strong winds, but many people stayed at the beach anyway.

Close up.

There were fishing boats on the beach. A tractor pulled them in and out of the water.

A fisherman cleaning his net.

Dogs on guard.

Monte Gordo is popular as a training camp, both for elite athletes and ordinary people who wants to stay fit.

We went to the little mountain village Odeleite to participate in an 11 km long mountain walk.

The walk was though in the terrain. In the valley oranges grew on trees, smelling wonderful.

Finally our goal in sight.

All images were done with a Nikon D300 DSLR with a 18-200VR zoom lens. I wrote a more detailed hands-on report about the lens here.

Larger images, and more, here.

Welcome

Welcome to this website/blog. After 5+ years on DPReview and Pbase I will try to present images, equipment experiences, general thoughts and articles about photography in a more organized way here.

Often you give the same advice and comments over and over at the DPReview forums on lenses, cameras etc. So I thought it might be a good idea to save the information on special pages. One example is the page “Going on safari?”.

The “Tri-X”-article is more personal. It is just a draft and much more content will be added to it. Other articles I hope to add are personal tips about getting the best from compact “P&S” cameras, black & white with digital, camera nostalgia, etc. Lenses I probably will write about: Nikkor 18-55 II, 17-55 2.8, 85 1.8, 70-200 VR, TC-17, 55-200VR, Sigma 30 1.4, 150 2.8. And maybe also Nikkor 18-200VR and Tokina 12-24. Nikon D300 will get a lot of attention and maybe there will be a little about Nikon D40 (if it wont be discontinued soon).

Tomorrow I will travel to Portugal for a week and hope to come back with decent images and a user report about the D300/18-200 as a travel set. I will still post on DPReview and add images to my galleries at Pbase. So if you dont visit this site/blog anymore we might meet each other there:-)

Tigers and skiing

 

 

Finally experienced some snow and good winter weather when we went to Orsa, Dalarna, in Sweden for a short holiday.

I decided to leave my 70-200VR at home and brought my D300 with 17-55 2.8, 18-55 II, and 55-200VR. I also took a Nikon P5000 as a pocket cam.

The D300/17-55 combo felt too heavy to carry when skiing, so I ended up shooting almost exclusivly with the small plastic 18-55 and 55-200VR.

The conditions for country skiing was great – Orsa Grönklitt has some of the best tracks in the country.There are wolves and bears in the forrests, so we did look a bit after footprints in the snow…

Some scenery:

 

 

 

 

In the predator park they had added a pair of siberian tigers. Still not full grown their weight was already over 200 kilos. Really magnificent animals. It felt like a scene from Jurassic Park when the guide noticed that they were chewing on the wire from the electrical fence… There were more functional wires fortunatly.

 

A lynx:

 

More scenery: